My G0704 CNC upgrades and conversion

[vinnito1]

Hello all,

I would like to share my CNC conversion with this site. Over the last 1.5yrs i've been looking at all the different conversion done with Grizzly and Precision Matthews bench top mills. I choose this site to share the build because I enjoy the atmosphere and all types of projects shared by its members.
This mill wasn't my first choice for a bench top conversion, but I got a great deal on it.....free. Well not entirely free, i had to barter my time in exchange for it. I've acquired alot of parts over the last year and even made a few parts at my local Makerspace for the conversion. Now I plan on tackling a major upgrade...changes to the a column. I won't provide too many details at this point because well...its going to take alot of work to make it right and i'm still thinking through the steps on how to make it. Here is a few pictures of what i'm planning.


You can see the size difference between with the G0704 column assembly and the one i'm planning on doing . I know doing these upgrades doesn't make sense but who cares . Hopefully I can learn a lot on machining. I've spent way too many hours in front of a computer designing stuff so now its time for me to start making them. I was able to pick up the material today and hopefully soon I will make start machining


Progress and updates will be a bit slow because I can only spend a few hours a week machining parts and its about a 40 mile drive to the local makerspace in Dallas

Thanks and I hope you all enjoy the build
V

 

[tweinke]

Slow and steady will get it done! It should be a fun learning process. Please do keep us up to date.

 

[vinnito1]

New goodies from Christmas to help with the build! I purchased a 550 mm long 1605 ball screw from automation4 less and 580 mm long HGW20 Hiwin linear rails from Motion Constrained. These should give me a little more than 15" in travel in the Z direction. I was planning on using HGH20 Hiwin carriages, but Motion Constrained called me to let me know they are out of stock for another 2-3 months. This was not a big deal because I can easily adapt the design to use the HGW style carriages. I did look into using RGH15 Hiwin linear rails, but they were quoted 3-4X higher in price than the HGH style. Ouch!


I now have a Shars granite square to help aligned everything when its all built up. The shipped inspect sheet states the perpendicularity between the 90 deg surfaces is .00008"/6" which is more than good enough for what I hope to achieve.

 

[tweinke]

It will be interesting to watch your progress.

 

[vinnito1]

It will be interesting to watch your progress.

Thanks. I am planning to start machining parts early next week. Hopefully everything works out

 

[BROCKWOOD]

Looking forward to your updates! I must ask, though, what is the local makerspace in Dallas?

 

[vinnito1]

Looking forward to your updates! I must ask, though, what is the local makerspace in Dallas?

Me too, I hope it all goes relatively smoothly . I'm not quite sure what your asking. If you are asking where is it located, it is located in Carrollton just northeast of DFW airport. If you are asking what is Markerspace, it is a place where a local community of builders are able to get access to equipment to complete their projects. I am fairly luck that the Dallas chapter has a well tooled machined shop area for me to be able to complete my project. The big stuff they have is a Bridgport Mill with DRO, 2 larger lathes, and even an older Haas CNC ( wish i had training to use it though ). Attached is the link for more info.

 

[BROCKWOOD]

vinnito1 you have answered my question. I lived in the D/FW metroplex for 9 years & still return on occasion. This sounds like a really cool space to have! Thanks for the link!

 

[vinnito1]

I was able to spend some time in front of the Bridgeport today milling a slot into the right side column piece. The left and right side column pieces will have slots milled into them to help locate the pieces before being bolted then welded together. A little thought needed to be put into how I was going to mill the slot since it was 3-4" longer than the table travel on the Bridgeport. Luckily, I talked to a machinist at work last week who let me borrow 5/8' precision dowel pins that could slide into the T-slots. This allowed me to slide the work piece without losing my Y axis origin. I used several 1-2-3 blocks to re-establish the X axis origin. Once I get the center piece cut to final length, I'll wont know how good using the 1-2-3 blocks worked out.


Cutting of the slot

Work piece unbolted from the table and slid to the left end of milling table. Using 1-2-3 blocks and edge finder to re-establish X axis location. I used a 0.0005" dial test indicator to check that the milled slot was parallel to X-axis by less than 0.001" before fully tightening the clamps


Completed slot.

I thought that I would be able to complete machining 2 parts today, but I barely made it half way with this one. It was all worth it when I did a test fit with the mating center piece. It just needed a little finesse for the center piece to snugly into the slot

 

[vinnito1]

A small update, I completed rough machining on 1 of 2 vertical uprights and started machining on the 2nd vertical upright. Here are a few pictures sharing progress with everyone


This is the completed machining of the first vertical upright. After assembly and welding, I plan on doing a finish machining pass to remove any warpage that occurred during welding on critical surfaces, followed by scrapping in the surfaces the linear rails mount to and the lower piece that attaches to the mill base. Does anyone think I will get a large amount of warpage welding 1" thick 1018 steel together assuming I don't get too much heat in the metal. I'll be bolting the major parts together before welding. My plans are to have up to 0.050" of material machined off to get the important surfaces trued up before scrapping


Cutting the 2nd vertical upright to length. 36" long vernier calipers to make measuring a 32" long piece of steel simple.


After thinking about a better way pick up the slot location after sliding the work piece down the table, I just wrote down the values on the DRO, used an edge finder to get the location again, and then enter the values back in the DRO. This is a much simpler and better way to do this IMO than how I did it on the 1st part. I also got a 4 flute 0.655" stub nose carbide end mill from my father. This made machining the slot go soooo much quicker vs using a 1/2 HSS end mill

First of many test fits. Still have lots more machining and head scratching to do, but seeing this put a smile on my face.